


What About The Body?

by Andromedanewton



Series: Anita and Edward (my canon divergence) [5]
Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton
Genre: Anita Gets Smutty, Awkward, Canon-Typical Violence, Edward Almost Chokes, F/M, Minor Character Death, Post Sex Glow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 16:53:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7692247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andromedanewton/pseuds/Andromedanewton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The morning after dawns and brings all new challenges.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What About The Body?

**Author's Note:**

> I have almost finished writing this story already! Phew! It has distracted me ridiculously in a way I never thought Death could! I have never, ever, shipped Anita and Edward and the original first chapter of this was written as a dare, someone asked me to try make it work, so, never one to shy away from a challenge (ask my friend Gary about having his pants tugged down) I took it up, and it has run away with me. Or I ran away with it. One or the other. Either way, I'm enjoying it and I hope you are too!
> 
> Exciting day for me today too, one of my lovely girls who has read my stories, both Anita and original, and gives me so much praise and confidence, assuring me that I do not suck at writing, is coming for her annual visit! Deni, I know you aren't on here, but I love you, girl!

I woke up feeling warm and safe in a tangle of limbs and sheets. Edward had done as he promised and held me all night, and most of the morning if the sun shining through the open curtains was anything to go by, and my body ached in some delicate places that were a delicious reminder of all the things we had done. I closed my eyes again and sighed, Edward’s breathing deep and even, his body curved around me from behind as though still protecting me from anything that might happen. I revelled in the feel of him so relaxed and I had definitely seen and experienced a new side of him in the last day. I felt myself beginning to doze again as I wondered what had woken me in the first place then two firm knocks on the door made me blink my eyes open again. Edward stirred slightly behind me as I moved his arm from around my waist and slung my legs over the side of the bed. They still trembled faintly and it made me bite my lip as my eyes focused on the upturned chair and dishevelled covers. On the floor by the bed was one of the complimentary robes; Edward had wrapped me in it instead of a towel when we got out of the shower and I snatched it up, fastening it around me as I headed towards the door.  
‘What’s happening?’ Edward’s sleepy murmur from the bed made me glance back at him with a smile.  
‘Door. Did we order breakfast?’  
He leant up on his elbow, sleep fading from his eyes almost instantly. ‘What?’  
‘Breakfast.’ I reminded him about that meal that came after sleeping and went on my tiptoes to look out of the peephole and saw…nothing. Literally nothing as though the peephole were covered?  
My brain took the final step towards being awake and I threw myself sideways through the open bathroom door as four soft thuds signalled a silenced gun firing through the door and I yelped as I hit the tiled floor hard on my right side. The door crashed open behind me and I scrambled to get up, my Browning still sitting on the sink unit where I had left it, but I never made it. Whoever had come through the door grabbed the back of my hair and dragged me to my feet. I saw in the reflection of the mirror it was the guy from the bar last night, I guess his drug had worn off and he wasn’t happy.  
‘Where is he?’ He screamed at me, bringing his gun up to my head and the fight I had been planning on giving sank into anger instead of movement as I glanced at my weapons, so near and yet so far.  
‘He’s not here!’ I lied.  
‘Where is he?’ He repeated with a growl and an extra tug on my hair that hurt enough to make me gasp.  
‘We had another fight after he drugged you, I left him there.’  
He glared at me in the mirror and I was glad the fear and pain in my eyes was real as my words were obviously complete bullshit. ‘Get dressed. You’re coming with me.’ He pulled me back towards the door. Edward must have heard me lying for him as he hadn’t come running to the rescue, and I wasn’t sure if he had a plan, but I really hoped he did.  
He all but dragged me in front of him by my hair and I was glad we had shared a bed as it was more convincing that I was the only one here, but as we reached the edge of the wall he slowed as though he wasn’t convinced, as though he thought Edward could be here somewhere. My heart was tight in my chest and pounded heavily and I knew it wouldn’t be long until Edward made his move, if he was going to make one, and I tried to still myself, letting out a long slow breath, knowing even if Edward didn’t make a move this man would have to let me go to let me get dressed and I might be able to disarm, might be able to stop him myself, of course it never got that far.  
I got past the corner first and noticed Edward in my peripheral vision but didn’t look, just tensed and waited as I was forced to take another step forward. I had expected something, some kind of chaos, but instead there was a small click, and a “phut" like an air cylinder releasing, and the man’s grip was gone, his body dropping behind me where he stood, but I still didn’t move, unsure what had happened and how incapacitated the man was.  
Edward grabbed my arm and pulled me to him as he lowered his gun, tucking me under his arm. He was still naked and a tension ran through him like a humming line and I finally looked down at the man who had broken in. He literally had crumpled into a heap, a hole in the side of his head about the size of a quarter which oozed fluids down over his temple and ear. The wall opposite was clean, there was no follow through spatter, but the gun Edward carried should have been powerful enough to have wiped out half his head.  
‘Are you okay?’ He said without taking his gun or eyes off the body on the floor.  
‘Yeah, all good. What the hell is in that gun?’  
‘I’ll tell you while we dress. We need to go.’ He encouraged me across the room towards the bags while he went and secured the door as best he could.  
I did as he suggested and got out navy blue jeans and a red polo. My hands hovered over my Nikes as he came back into the room but he stopped me with a simple; ‘Wear the hiking boots.’  
I nodded and dressed as he did in black combat pants and t-shirt, speaking as he did so. ‘It’s a special ammo I commissioned. Packs a deadly punch but no exit wound. Fragments on impact with enough force to kill if it’s a head shot but not mutilate.’  
‘That’s, um, practical. Tidy.’ Was all I could think of saying.  
‘Are you in shock?’ He paused tucking his shirt into his pants.  
‘No, I mean not medical shock. Just coming down from the adrenaline rush.’ I assured him, sure I wasn’t in shock.  
‘It’ll do that. You have time to use the bathroom before we go. I need to do a few things before we leave.’  
‘What about the body?’ I looked at it in the doorway.  
‘I’ll deal with it.’  
I nodded again and headed towards the bathroom where my weapons were, but I didn’t reach it. Edward, who had been pretty much the hard-nosed, emotionless killer I had known all these years, suddenly faded away as he blocked my path, cupped my face in his hands and kissed me. It was quick and desperate but hot and probing all at once and I didn’t have a chance to react, my head spinning as my stomach fluttered and he let me go before I could do more than whimper.  
‘Go get your toys.’ He murmured, letting me go, and to my surprise, as I walked past, he slapped my ass. It made me chuckle, I wasn’t sure why, but as I stepped over the corpse I realised how surreal a situation this was. Death and The Executioner were sleeping together and had a hotel room complete with hitman corpse and bullet holes. Yup, surreal covered it.  
When I came out of the bathroom Edward was closing his laptop. I had no doubt he had already armed himself. Everything else was still as we left it, body in a heap, bed in a mess, although he had righted the chair we had seriously abused last night.  
‘We slept longer than you meant us to, didn’t we?’ I asked as I stood, slipping his laptop away in its case.  
‘Much longer. You’re a distraction.’  
‘Uh, sorry?’ I said uncertainly.  
He shrugged. ‘You’re a good distraction but a fat lot of good that will do us if it gets us killed. Come with me.’ He headed for the door and I trailed after him. He moved the door carefully where one of the hinges was broken, checked the corridor then led me three rooms down where he used our keycard to get in.  
‘Wait, we had two rooms?’ I frowned as he went inside and flicked on the shower, emptied the complimentary shower gel into the plughole, leaving the bottle on the side with the lid off, then ran the sink until it was wet and went back into the bathroom.  
‘We do now.’ He pulled back the covers on the bed and rumpled them. ‘Move the chairs around a little so it looks like we’ve used them.’ He instructed me. ‘Actually, this is now our room, that room,’ he pointed towards the wall nearest ours, ‘is now that dead jerk’s.’  
‘That’s what you were doing on the laptop?’ I asked doing as he said while he was dragging back the sheets and mussing the bottom before punching the pillows so they were dented.  
‘Hacking the hotel computer so it looks like we were never in that room. It should, if I’m good enough, which I think I am, give us enough distance to be unconnected to the random murder that occurred three rooms over.’ He went back into the bathroom, flushed the toilet, rumpled the toilet paper and shut off the shower while I watched him from the doorway. He stepped past me again and picked up the phone, calling reception I guessed from what he said.  
‘This is room three-thirteen. Can you get some food packed up for us? BLT’s, orange juice, lots of coffee to go? We’ll be checking out in the next ten minutes. Family emergency.’ He listened intently to the reply before hanging up.  
‘You’ve had to do this before?’  
‘More often than you’d think.’ He came and took my right hand in his left. ‘That ought to do it.’  
‘And it works?’ I let him lead me out of the room again.  
‘I haven’t been caught yet.’ He smiled down at me.  
‘I guess not.’ We went back though the broken door and finished packing the few things we had taken out, everything except Edward’s wet jeans which he carried and threw down the garbage chute on the way out. I noticed he also made me put his rodeo shirt in my bag. Guess it was mine now, not that I had needed it last night. The last thing we did was move the corpse into the bathroom.  
Breakfast was waiting for us, all packed in a nice hotel monogrammed paper bag, and Ted, I guessed given the southern drawl he affected, asked me to check out while he had the car brought around. The concierge told me to have a nice day, Mrs Forrester, which almost made me laugh out loud, and Edward met me at the door, taking my hand again with a smile that was completely Ted and not at all Edward. Or was it? Last night I had seen a more relaxed side of Edward, one much more Ted, and I wondered how much of the latter was actually real. Ted was like a lighter hearted version of Edward, with some country thrown in, and last night I felt like I had seen the real Edward for the first time; relaxed and at ease, without the tension that made him such a bad ass motherfucker, almost adding a third persona to the mix. Weird thing was I thought I was in love with all of them.  
The BLT’s were good, the coffee was even better. Watching Edward eat as he drove was fascinating, like it was an automatic function his body performed as his serious eyes watched everything at once for any sign of danger; the road ahead, the mirrors, glancing occasionally at the console in front of him. I held my still steaming paper cup with my sleeves and decided I wanted to dig a little. Maybe he would even answer.  
‘So is Ted an actual person or someone you created?’  
He spared me a glance, his face not slipping from concentration. ‘He’s real. He has the paperwork to prove it.’  
‘What about Edward? Does he have paperwork?’  
‘Maybe. Somewhere, but I don’t think so.’  
I chewed my lip for a moment. ‘Which one was rocking my world last night? And this morning?’  
He laughed and shook his head. ‘You couldn’t tell?’  
‘Pretty much all you said was my name and it’s kinda hard to tell if you’re drawling from that.’  
‘I’m going to let you figure that out for yourself.’  
‘Soon?’ I asked and he looked at me again, his eyes now dark and amused.  
‘You know how hard it is not to stop this car, throw you in the back seat and have my way with you until you don’t know which name to scream?’  
His admission made me start. He had been all business again, other than the one kiss, it hadn’t even crossed my mind he had been thinking about…well I had been so why not him too? ‘As hard as it is for me not to seriously consider breaking however many traffic codes and risking a serious crash by going down on you?’  
He had just put the last crust of his BLT in his mouth and I bet he wished he hadn’t. He sputtered, choking on the bite and it made me laugh. The heap big hitman driven to distraction by my one little suggestion. It was incredibly empowering. He grabbed one of the napkins we had between us and spat the crust into it as he coughed, eyes actually watering as he spared me a wide eyed glance.  
‘You little minx. You…would you?’ He didn’t seem to believe it.  
I shrugged. ‘If I could reach without removing my belt, guarantee we wouldn’t die in a stunning fireball of pornographic proportions and that we wouldn’t get pulled over, sure, why not?’ I knew I couldn’t reach with the seatbelt so it was mostly teasing, but given the chance later, hell yeah I would.  
‘If I was certain parking up wouldn’t draw the attention of the local law I would pull over right now.’  
‘Good to know.’ I smirked. ‘So you want me to suck of Ted or Edward first?’  
‘Oh my God, you’re going to kill me.’ He shifted in his seat, pulling at the jeans over his crotch.  
‘Just a little death. Or two.’ He turned to me again and I wiggled my eyebrows. ‘If last night really wasn’t a one off.’  
‘It had better not be.’  
‘Good.’ I settled back in my seat and drank my coffee, a satisfied smirk on my face.  
It was several miles later he spoke again. ‘Okay, we’re hitting New Mexico in the next few miles, I need to give you a heads up.’  
‘Okay.’ I angled my body as best I could to face him so he knew I was paying attention.  
‘Remember here I’m Ted Forrester, bounty hunter. I work with the locals so a lot know who I am. No slipping up.’  
‘Okay so Ted, not Edward. I’ll try but you have never been Ted with me in private, always Edward.’  
‘That might change later.’  
‘Worth knowing.’  
‘I’m hoping this will be a flying visit; get in, grab some toys, get out, but I’m never sure what’s waiting for me when I get back to Santa Fe so we might have an hour or so delay, depending on what’s come in. Just go along with it. If anyone asks you’re on loan to somewhere, I don’t care where, and asked me to come along hence the brief stop off. You want my back up.’  
‘That has to be police business, I wouldn’t bring you on a raising consultancy.’ I pointed out.  
‘Why not?’  
I laughed. ‘Because you know shit about it, and my executioner licence only lets me travel to states surrounding Missouri. You didn’t think this through.’  
‘Damn your logic.’ He picked up his orange juice. ‘Okay, I have picked up a case and I asked for your help. Happy?’  
‘Sure. Makes more sense that way. Do we need to hash out more details?’  
‘Privacy clause.’ He shook his head. ‘Not at liberty to discuss it.’  
‘That’s convenient.’  
‘More often than you’d think. But seriously, try not to get into any deep conversations with anyone, don’t give too much detail if anyone asks. Hopefully it won’t come to that but you can never be sure.’  
‘Okay, you’re Ted, I’m vague and we hit the road again, fast.’  
‘Got it in one.’  
‘Do you actually have a house in Santa Fe?’ I dug a little more, as he seemed to be in a giving mood.  
‘Yup, home base so to speak.’  
‘Wow.’ I looked back out at the road. ‘Never thought about you having an actual home to go to. Always thought you were more a keep on moving, onto the next kinda guy.’  
‘I was, for a while, but it’s not always practical. Sometimes it’s nice to have somewhere to hang up the guns and take a short break.’  
‘I will believe you take breaks when I see it.’  
‘Unless we stop Van Cleef fast that might be a while.’  
‘I’m not going anywhere.’  
‘Best news I’ve had all day.’ He said as he put down his orange juice and took my hand. What surprised me most was that he raised it to his lips and kissed my knuckles softly. It made my heart skip a beat to have him do something so simple but cornily romantic. Could things be romantic on a cross country trip involving murder? Bonnie and Clyde seemed to think so.  
When we reached Santa Fe I noticed we followed the signs to the airport, but didn’t comment, just waited to see where we were going, and Edward pulled up to the rental place. He took me inside, returned the car and they went to fetch what was evidently his, probably having left it there when he flew to wherever he had flown to, be it St Louis or somewhere else before that. He winked at me while we waited, his eyes shaded by his hat, Ted’s hat, although I guess he was Ted for the next few hours. I wondered if Ted was as wild as Edward when he let his hair down. A few minutes later and the rumble of an engine had me turn around towards the wall of glass that made up the front of the building. Out front stood a dark and imposing Humvee.  
‘No way that’s yours.’ I muttered under my breath.  
‘It sure is.’ Ted drawled, putting his hand on the base of my spine and leading me towards the door. ‘Just got to switch the bags over and we’ll head on over to the homestead.’  
‘Holy shit.’ I whispered to myself as we stepped back out into the bright afternoon sun.  
The thing was huge, I’d need to use the steps to get up into it and still climb, and was rugged as hell, but it only stood to reason Edward would have something this meaty as his personal ride. The bags were switched, Ted saw me into the passenger seat, offering me a hand up, and we were on the road again.  
Ted’s house was old and rustic, matching both the landscape and all the other buildings I had seen on the way here, with a blue-violet door that seemed incredibly common here. It was one story and sure not what I would have pictured for either of his personas. Okay, maybe Ted, although I guess I had him on a ranch. Edward I would have put in an ultra modern penthouse.  
‘This is…cute.’ I said as we approached the door. He hadn’t gone for the bags so neither did I.  
‘Thanks. When we get in, would you make coffee while I grab what we need?’  
‘Sure.’  
He unlocked the door, two locks, not just the one, and quickly stepped inside and disabled the alarm system. ‘Kitchen’s that way.’ He pointed towards the right as he took a left.  
‘You want it to go or drink here?’ I called after him.  
‘Drink here, we have time, but fill the pot so we have extra.’  
I walked through a small living room with white walls, too many animal skulls on the walls and a small fireplace with two leather chairs in front of it. I took in what I could, fresh flowers, which meant someone had probably been keeping the house in order while he was gone, and through into another living room with a large white couch and some large expanses of bare wall. Through the far archway was a dining room and beyond it a kitchen. Finally. It was as quaint as the rest of the house but neat and orderly. I found the coffee beans in the freezer and after a brief search I found a grinder. Once that was running I filled the coffee pot with water, managing to severely splash myself through to the skin. I sighed at myself in despair and finished what I was doing, setting the coffee to drip through, priorities, before going back to where I had seen Edward disappear down the hallway.  
‘Hey!’ I called, not knowing where he would be in one of the many doors down the light corridor.  
‘What’s up?’ His voice was somewhere distant and muffled.  
‘I soaked myself, like the genius I am. I’m going to grab another shirt from the car.’  
‘No!’ He yelled, and I heard movement before he appeared in a doorway near the end. ‘No, stay in here, borrow one of my shirts.’  
‘You think I’ll get grabbed or something on your doorstep?’ I pulled a face at him as he came towards me, detouring into another room on the way before reappearing with a shirt in his hand.  
‘It’s not out of the realms of possibility.’ He handed me a well worn t-shirt with the name New Mexico State emblazoned across it. I raised an eyebrow and looked at him. ‘Ted’s alumni.’ He shrugged and started back down the hallway.  
‘Cool.’ I said simply before heading back to the first living room. I put the Browning on the table and slipped my arms out of the shoulder rig, letting it hang around my waist, pulling my shirt over my head. As I cleared my face though I froze, realising I wasn’t alone. Standing in the doorway, staring at me was one very angry, brunette woman.

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaand we all know who that was turning up, don't we! Deliberately left her out of the tags, sorry, but wanted it to remain a surprise! Donna! Whoops! Bad Edward!
> 
> Also, Edward almost choking on his sandwich, that is still making me chuckle now, not to mention 'stunning fireball of pornographic proportions'! Bahahahaha! I'm easily amused!


End file.
